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Saturday, 05 December 2009

Looking for the Photographer

I've spent a very enjoyable couple of days looking at two-and-a-quarter square pictures by searching for various TLRs in flickr's "Hive Mind" feature (which also, incidentally, finally gives me a way to use flickr that I can tolerate). I tried to contact some of the photographers, thinking that I might post a few of the pictures I particularly liked here on TOP, but it seems few people answer their flickr mail, or whatever it is that's taking my messages to them. Or maybe they just don't want to be bothered, I don't know. Too bad, anyway.

The Hive Mind (a random partial page with "Mamiya C330" as a filter)

There's a certain junky quality to looking at semi-random collections of pictures by different photographers. It makes me realize that when I look at collections of pictures, I am typically seeking the personality or the sensibility behind the pictures. I'm looking for the photographer: trying to see what subject-matter passions he or she might have, trying to detect, over the course of many pictures as a body of work, what his or her taste and visual sensibility is.

Obviously, one must consciously not do that when looking at aggregations of work by many photographers. The upside is that such collections have a dynamism and a vitality that is often missing—or more subdued—in more self-conscious portfolios by single photographers. A Robert Adams book or a Daido Moriyama book is all Adams, all Moriyama; the sensibility is much stronger. But the variety is much less. A "hived" group has everything all together in a jumble: all sorts of styles, all sorts of subjects, all sorts of ways of seeing, black and white and color side-by-side. With TLR shots, even different time periods are represented as well, as people upload work they did ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years ago. Even some of the obvious failures as single images have something to contribute when they're looked at in the context of a much larger whole. It makes me think of what Dr. Johnson said of the Metaphysical Poets, that famous first phrase much loved by Eliot: "The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and
art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their
learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader
commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes
admires, is seldom pleased."

It makes me want to edit a book of selects. The imposition of an overarching editorial sensibility, even in the absence of a guiding artistic one, along with (of necessity) a much tighter edit, could make for a dynamic and enriching aesthetic experience indeed, for the viewer of such a book. It would please. There's no market for that, I suppose.

Self portrait, poring over pictures. The time stamp reads 2:26 a.m.

Two thoughts occur. One, trivial, is that looking at work like this tends to emphasize the coherence provided by the use of the same camera throughout. The other, more profound, is something I think I see and might just be imagining: the work done with the cheaper cameras seems more interesting, less conventional. I fantasize that that's because the cheaper cameras are being used by younger people who are newer to photography. There's an exuberance there, a sense of real exploration. They're pictures made by people who haven't yet learned what you're not supposed to take pictures of. The pictures made with very expensive cameras show a more staid, conventional, less exploratory, more technically perfectionist mindset, like a sixty-year-old driving a Ferrari cautiously. There's a higher boredom quotient. It's a premise that would be hard to prove, but it's the sense I get, anyway.

Another 2-Lubitels hypothesis, somehow related : the wealthier part of the market buying more expensive cameras had had to be (money-wise) successful enough, which means conforming and adhering to some social rules, and therefore these people are more akin to observe some social conventions, even in aesthetic matters (thinking of the rule of thirds http://www.whattheduck.net/strip/301 eg).
Even harder to prove than yours, probably...

"A "hived" group has everything all together in a jumble: all sorts of styles, all sorts of subjects, all sorts of ways of seeing, black and white and color side-by-side. With TLR shots, even different time periods are represented as well, as people upload work they did ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years ago."

There are ecosystems on Flickr that have over the years, cultivated a system for sorting through, and collecting the quality work. Doing random searches can be a bit overwhelming. Like most things, with Flickr you get back what you put in.

´...the work done with the cheaper cameras seems more interesting, less conventional.´

I know that since switching from a nikon DSLR to a Canon g10, I enjoy taking pictures more. Quite simply, it is more FUN! The results are techniquely poorer, but for me it just feels very liberating to stop worrying about all this IQ stuff.

"They're pictures made by people who haven't yet learned what you're not supposed to take pictures of."

Bingo. That's often the charm of photos taken (with any camera) by people who aren't so self-conscious about what they're doing...and are also not self-conscious about trying to appear not self-conscious (as so many current-day art photographers are). "Professional" photography can sure be dull and trite.

>>> looking at work like this tends to emphasize the coherence provided by the use of the same camera throughout<<<

I've been thinking about how using different cameras affects one's photography. Until I bought a Ricoh GRD over three years ago I had been using a Leica M6, which was known as the street photography camera par excellence, but I found that the GRD pushed me to a "looser" and more fluid shooting style that I found that I liked much better for street photography.

More recently, from January through September of this year I used exclusively a Leica M8.2, which I never really took to; and the street photography that I shot with it was generally not as good as what I had done with the GRD and GRD2. Switching to a Ricoh GRD3 in October felt like a liberation after the M8, and I felt that what I did with it was a lot more interesting and better photography than most of what I had done with the M8 — the street shots had an immediacy and intimacy that I just hadn't achieved with the M8.

Last week I received the Leica M9. My initial reaction is that I still prefer the GRD3 for street photography, while the M9 is pushing me to a different, more deliberate type of photography, based on pictures showing more detail and texture. Perhaps I'll write a review from this point of view.

Is it possible that some of the same people are shooting cheap cameras for fun and expensive cameras to practice their client-pleasing commercial chops?

I don't know what you mean exactly by "cheap", but for me "cheap" means antique or toy (or both), and there's a bit of natural selection exercised by such cameras. One thing you often don't get when you don't pay for it is control and precision. There's a fair degree of randomness, and attendant curiosity, when I shoot the VistaQuest or the Ikomat. They often take more interesting photographs (sometimes in a good way, sometimes not) than I might have if I'd had more say. One either takes to this experimental way of shooting or one gives up in frustration and gets a "better" tool.

P.S. It isn't my place to say, but I hope that's not your standard editing posture. I think I feel a sympathetic ache in my neck.

Well at least your beard hasn't turned white nor the fur on top of your head.

And see too your monitor reflects on your spectacles, gives us all a weird look.

Just hooked up to Skype as a good friend of mine said it is lower in price than a telephone call. The joys of long-distance boundaries. As the crow flies we're close but by telephone we may as well be in a different time zone. And standard long-distance telephone charges can be horrendous.

As to online photo display companies, haven't explored that realm of existence very far; anybody else?

I had a lot of fun one holiday just photographing with disposable cameras. Felt more free and loose, playing with a camera with no settings at all, and experimenting. I actually got a couple of pictures I really liked too.

»…the work done with the cheaper cameras seems more interesting, less conventional. I fantasize that that's because the cheaper cameras are being used by younger people who are newer to photography. There's an exuberance there, a sense of real exploration.«

The reason may not lie in the users or their age, but could also have to do with the cameras themselves and their »nature«, for lack of a better word (hey, my computer tells me it's 2:27 a.m. here right now, my brain is tired).

With the big, serious cameras we tend to be wherever we are partly because of the camera, and that does influence the approach to picture taking.

With the smaller cameras it is more likely to be the other way round: they happen to be there because we are there. They are just along for the ride, and the pictures that are taken benefit from just being part of an experience rather than the reason for it.

Your description of the "hived" group pictures could probably serve as a motivator for oneself to push one’s limits.

I was thinking a lot about a similar issue (and by pure casuality wrote about it today), looking at it from the edge of "consistency" and how to avoid it. Because if you’re only worried about consistency in your photography, while you may become a technical master, you also may become pretty boring.

So the question would be if you can push the boredom quotient by just trying new things, new "sorts of styles, … sorts of subjects, … sorts of ways of seeing, black and white and color side-by-side" - probably also with the help of new gear (like Robert Thorp did) or a new place to shoot…

Far be it from a 53 year old codger like myself to disagree with David S's take on the relative abilities of old and young photographers, but I've found that a lot of young people's efforts with a camera reflect about as much depth as their self-absorbed, pin-ball semi-consciousness allows. Or would that be a wild, unsustainable generalization?

Personally, I find that my most creative images (but not necessarily my best images) are those captured with my everyday "carry camera," the one I try to always have within arm's reach and which have generally been of the less expensive variety. (Depending upon your perspective, I suppose the same could be said of my present E-P1/20mm combo, but I figure once you cross the $1,000 threshold, any claim to being inexpensive goes out the window, no matter what the object is.)

I speculate this is because most of the images I capture with these cameras are impulse-driven and captured with very little forethought: A scene catches my eye, the camera is powered up, raised to my eye (often single-handedly), the shutter is triggered, the image captured, and then it's lowered and turned off.

By contrast, for my serious photography, I'll generally spend time "working" a scene before I setup my tripod -- and I almost always use a tripod -- and as a result, the images I ultimately capture this way tend to be the product of considerable forethought. I'm not suggesting either approach is better than the other and I suppose the ideal is to somehow combine the best qualities of both. Hmm...

David S. must be speaking from more experience than I have about going in "paid groups" to places like Yellowstone. I wouldn't know, having never done anything remotely like that in my 63 years.

I am happy though to concede to youth an extra measure of strength and energy. An example for me is the very responsive way Joel Meyerowitz handled his 8x10 Deadorff when photographing "Cape Light" and other books in the 1970's and 1980's. That takes more energy (not to mention ability!) than I've got these days. Now I just bring something smaller than a view camera along and shoot life as it happens.

After many years shooting with heavier DSLRs I found that occasionally using the diminutive D-Lux 4 could be rather liberating. It resulted in a number of fresh looking pictures I would never have made with the bulkier equipment.

Personally, I know I had more energy, and was more spontaneous, inventive and creative when I was younger. I had a far greater passion for just about everything, including the mundane and everydayness of life, and far less inhibition about exploring it. It is not my better equipment that has turned me into a boring old fart, but the aging process.

Sorry to be blunt, but I hold this as a self evident rock 'n roll truth. Youth has that (typically short arc of) creative spark. Anything else is just Jack Bruce, sans record contract, whinging that no one appreciates skill and technique. Sure, there are a few photographic Neil Young's out there, but the truth is, most of us don't do anything interesting after our second or third photo album.

I like the old guy comment. It's a neat division between youthful experimentation and an older approach that is more about technique. Ideally, one should keep the excitement and add the technique. Sadly many replace the excitement with technique.

I have seen a similar progression in my shooting from when I started: going from no technique, to trying to perfect technique on shots that had nothing to say! Now, I'm trying to find something to say, and use the technique needed to say it....

When considering painters one might be forgiven to come to the conclusion that age, and experience, and technique make the better artist. What starts at the art school with formal sessions and the production of boringly classic pictures later in life evolves into something fascinating if there is talent. There is often a shift towards the abstract, sometimes the non-figurative. With age these artists get 'wilder'. Witness Paul Klee, Picasso, Mondrian, Zao Wou-Ki.

I dare to say that few painters who immediately started with abstract/non-figurative work made it to the top.